Dora

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A gift; short form of Dorothy/Theodora; now also independent

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/doɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Dora is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Nicaragua it is the 62nd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 318(inferred from the name graph)
  • ARArgentina≈1 in 553
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 557

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈290,000 people, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
353 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 234 (inferred from the name graph)

Hungary

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

DoraLatin(measured from records)
ΔώραGreek(measured from records)
დორაGeorgian(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Short form of Dorothy or Theodora; Greek origin ‘gift’

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

How Dora is read(measured from records)

Dora is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish55%

    Diminutivo de Dorotea, Teodora o Isidora.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • English31%

    A gift; short form of Dorothy/Theodora; now also independent.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

    A female given name from Ancient Greek.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Dora counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Dora is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈290,000 est.≈1 in 4.8K—Dora34
AR Argentina#186≈82,000 est.≈1 in 553106Dora89
US United States—61,6061 in 5.4K61KDora353
CO Colombia#192≈61,000 est.≈1 in 80044Dora115
HU Hungary—41,7221 in 23442K—1
SV El Salvador#139≈20,000 est.≈1 in 318—Dora33
NI Nicaragua#62≈11,000 est.≈1 in 557—Dora22
HR Croatia—6,4661 in 6548.7K—1

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the co-datosgov-candidates register; Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Dora is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name43 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Hungarian

    Also written Dóra, Do-Ra, Dōrå, Dôra, Dorá

  • Hindi given name22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Peru, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Urdu

    Also written Dara, ডোরা, Dorah, Dóra, Dãrä

  • Croatian given name27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Дора, Dóra, Doire, Dorat, Döra

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Dorà, Dorā, D̲ora, Dôra, Dṓra

  • Swahili given name84 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Tanzania, India, United States, Pakistan

    Languages: Swahili, Hindi, English

    Also written Dar, Dra, Daar, Drae, Daru

  • Indonesian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, United States, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Dóra, Ďora, Dörå

74 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Dora is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, Short form of Dorothy or Theodora; Greek origin ‘gift’

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Plg. lenk. Dor, Dora, Doras, Doraszewski, kur dorgalbūt iŠ Izydor (S. Rospond, 1967, p. 201), vok. Dorus, Dorias, Dory :lsidorus (M. Gottschald, 1954, p. 350).

    as a nameLietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)

  • In Swedish, Dora är ursprungligen en smekform till namn som → Dorotea och → Theodora. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 6 februari.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Frances Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, b. 1832Dora Boothby, b. 1881Dora Richter, b. 1892Dora Carrington, b. 1893Dora Gerson, b. 1899Dora Ratjen, b. 1918Dora Doll, b. 1922Dora Bryan, b. 1923Janet Adams, b. 1927Dora Venter, b. 1976

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

InformalHola Dora,Hi Dora, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 127 sources across 63 countries.

Official registers attesting Dora
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202061K#796
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20218.7K—
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20216.5K#163
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020174#796
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202575—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—44#78

Reference works 7

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Dora come from?
Short form of Dorothy or Theodora; Greek origin ‘gift’ Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
Is Dora a male or female name?
Dora is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Dora?
In the etymology graph, Doreen, Dee and Teodora are forms of the same name in other languages; Dorita and Doretta are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Isadora and Dorthy.
What does the name Dora mean?
In English, A gift; short form of Dorothy/Theodora; now also independent.
In which country does Dora have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 290 thousand people named Dora in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dora.
Where is Dora most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dora is densest in Hungary — about 1 in 234 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Dora?
In the United States, the national register counted 61,606 people named Dora in 2020, about 1 in 5.4 thousand residents.
How common is Dora compared with other names?
In Nicaragua, Dora is the 62nd most common given name of 16,569 given names recorded there.
How do you pronounce Dora?
A machine transcription gives /doɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.

What do you want to know about Dora?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dora

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dora” — the 62nd most common given name in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Dora parses inside a full name →